Art Day Stress Free Way to Play

Art Day Stress Free Way to Play

Creating art with others can be a stress-free way to be together if the medium is simple to use and the results unique. In this art, everyone, regardless of skill or previous experience, can join in to create equally grand artist pieces.

To accomplish this, start by giving all the children eyedroppers or medicine droppers. If they have never used an eyedropper before, start the game by showing them how to till an eyedropper with water and how to release the water.

Once they have the idea, change the water to water-based paint. Have the children till up their eyedroppers with paint or water dyed with food coloring.

Lay out a big piece of paper. Children each take a turn to drop some paint from their eyedropper. Hold the dropper low, just above the paper. On each successive turn, everyone gets to drop the paint from their eyedropper at higher and higher distances. Notice the difference in the results, depending on how far the paint drops.

Once there is plenty of paint on the paper, the children can stand around the painting and blow on the puddles and change the look of the work. They could also use straws and blow the paint around, or take turns tilting the paper one way and another to change the painting.

Other possibilities are to press another sheet of white paper on top to get a duplicate design, or fold the painted paper in half and get a whole new design.

You might want to play around with different things to paint on. Instead of using dry paper, wet it first. You could use wax paper, cardboard, or aluminum foil instead of regular paper or use burlap, wood, grocery bags, or rocks for different results. If eyedropper art loses its novelty, there is no end of other possible things to paint with. Try sponges, cotton balls, powder puffs, toothbrushes, shoe brushes, cotton swabs, and corks.

The best part of this kind of artwork is that everything looks good. Jackson Pollock and his ilk of painters made a whole new form of art famous by splattering paint this way and that.

You might want to take a group photo with all the variations these proud children did together on their art day.

Jackson Pollock

GOT GAME? Barbara Sher’s ten books in eleven foreign languages has a gazillion ideas on ways to play with your child whether you’re a parent of one or an inclusive teacher with many.

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This post originally appeared on our May/June 2016 Magazine